


The Dwarf in the Flask

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Gen, Speculation, Spoilers, and self-indulgence, that's all this is really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: Ronny asks a favor of Majeedah Batutah. For Baccano! Week 2017, Day 6: Meetings/Partings





	The Dwarf in the Flask

_1541_

_Aboard the floating laboratory of legendary alchemist Majeedah Batutah_

 

“Majeedah.”

The Arabic alchemist hides her surprise well, though of course not well enough to conceal it from Ronny. By the time she turns, she is ready with a sarcastic quip.

“Hello again, djinn. You know, it’s very improper to lurk in a woman’s chambers waiting for her, especially those of an unmarried woman such as myself.”

Ronny moves his shadowy form in a way that evokes a shrug. “Well, no matter,” he says breezily. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t mistake you for a harmless maiden, old woman. Although if I _were_ here to devour you, that knife up your sleeve wouldn’t protect you for long.”

She gives a grudging smile and lets the knife slide into her left hand without taking a particularly alert stance. “I suppose I’ll take you at your word, djinn, but am I then to assume you have some other business with me? Or is this merely a social call?”

“Would you be flattered if it were the latter? I don’t make many social calls, least of all to ships floating as far from land as yours does. You have held remarkably well to your resolution to avoid dry land. It’s been a hundred years, hasn’t it?”

“Has it? I get so absorbed in my work and the work of my students that I lose track.”

Her dark eyes watch him, trying to discern purpose in a face he has not bothered to materialize. She suspects him of flattery towards some specific end. Clever woman.

Ronny turns away thoughtfully, indicating the shift by fiddling with the candles in the room. “I have come on business,” he admits, “and I want you to know that I find your resolution admirable for a very specific reason.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’ve come to ask you to put it on hold temporarily.”

Her eyes narrow. “You want me to do something for you, on land?”

“In short, yes.”

“You should say what you mean, djinn.”

Another shadowy shrug. “I’ve always been one to beat around the bush, which my friends were well aware of when they wrote that scroll that you’re keeping to yourself. Given that they were always prone to mocking me for it, I find it unlikely that they failed to record that aspect of my personality. So you really shouldn’t be surprised… but no matter.”

Majeedah stares him down for a long moment.

“Are you done?” she asks.

“…Yes.”

“You’re not exactly endearing yourself to me, you know. Is this how you usually ask for favors?”

“I’ll have you know that it is,” Ronny retorted.

“And does it generally work?” Majeedah asked with a hint of genuine curiosity.

“It usually goes like this.”

She snorts. “How practical of you to stick to this plan, then.”

But she shows no sign of chasing him out. It is true that she would have been effectively powerless to do so, but she is the sort of woman who would have stubbornly ignored him if she didn’t intend to listen. Instead, she seems to be waiting for him to speak.

So he does.

“Paracelsus is dead,” he says without any further preamble.

She raises her eyebrows at that, and he feels a moment of smug pleasure that he has been the first to bring the news to her. But the source of her surprise lies elsewhere.

“Did he not summon you, then? He had meant to.”

“No, he did,” Ronny assures her. “He simply didn’t ask for immortality. He wanted to know how he could create something like me.”

“Hmm.” She is impressed—and then she snorts. “Was that his way of wishing for more wishes?”

“It was,” Ronny answers dryly.

“Clever little boy. Did you tell him?”

“Not directly. I’m not aware of the precise method, myself.” He lets silence hang in the air for a moment, and then continues in an overly casual tone. “I did, however, tell him where he might find my friends’ writings on the matter, and grant him the linguistic knowledge required to understand them.”

“Well, then,” says Majeedah.

“Well, then,” agrees Ronny.

“I take it he was successful?”

“Well, that depends on how you look at it—and it’s why I need your help.”

*

_Three months later_

 

When they reach Paracelsus’s laboratory, Majeedah steps out of her carriage alone and asks her attendant to wait at the entrance.

“Will you be all right from here?” Daniyah asks.

“Yes, dear, thank you. I can handle stairs when I need to.” Unfortunately, she came by immortality after her body had already begun to relinquish some of its youthful agility; she often asks one of her students to stay by her side when she is forced to make land, in case weariness gets the better of her. But she has her cane today, and besides, she suspects that the djinn means for her to take on this duty alone.

She moves through the laboratory with a slow dignity, unlocking every door she comes to with the key that the djinn gave her.

“Why don’t you do it yourself?” she’d asked, the natural question.

The shadowy mass in her room shifted. “Because I am so alike to it, I cannot know it; it exists in a sort of blind spot for me. I could attempt to approach it physically—but I have no idea what would happen if I did so. The universe itself might even wink out of existence.” He shrugged. “I like existing, so I’m not inclined to risk that outcome. But no matter.”

There is never any telling whether the djinn is serious when he speaks. Sometimes Majeedah thinks that he means everything he says, in his own way, and that is quite a thought to consider. In any case, he had seemed sincere in his request, and he had promised to permanently guarantee the well-being of her fleet of oceanbound workshops if she helped him. It seems a fair trade, even if she misses the rocking motion of the sea more with each passing second.

The djinn suspected that she would find what he has sent her looking for in the basement, so she makes her way there, lamp swinging against her cane with each step. As soon as she unlocks the door at the top is the stairs, she is sure that the djinn’s suspicion is correct. The hair on her arms stands up. There is _something_ down there, something powerful.

Candles set in sconces on the wall light themselves as she passes them. But she supposes that is only natural.

“Majeedah Batutah.”

A voice rings out in the basement, sounding neither male nor female, as she steps off the final stair, and the knowledge of precisely where in the basement she will find her goal appears in her head. She proceeds to an unnaturally well-lit corner of the room—

And there, she finds the homunculus’s flask.

It is a glass orb, perfectly spherical, set onto a metal stand atop the workbench. At its center is a whiff of white smoke. As Majeedah moves closer, the smoke shivers and grows solid until she is looking at a hermaphroditic human figure no larger than her hand. Standing, it presses its own hand to the inside of the glass.

“Majeedah Batutah,” it says again, looking at her. Looking _into_ her. The being in front of her is born of knowledge itself and thus possesses all knowledge that has ever existed or will ever exist in the universe. And yet it furrows its brow as it examines her. “Who is the one who told you of me, alchemist?”

Majeedah gives a wry smile. “I’ve been calling him a djinn, but apparently he was like you once,” she answers. “A man-made life form created with all the knowledge in the universe—but confined to the inside of a flask.”

“I do not need you to describe me to myself, Majeedah,” the homunculus says. “I know myself well enough, and I can see that you have the knowledge as well.”

“My apologies.”

“I see your understanding of this djinn in your mind. I see what he told you.”

“That speeds things up then, doesn’t it?” It is a relief: Majeedah’s legs are beginning to tire, and she leans a bit more heavily on her cane out of necessity.

“Here,” the homunculus says, and a chair materializes behind Majeedah. She sinks into it and finds it to be luxuriously soft.

“Thank you,” she says. “If you see what he told me, you know what he wanted me to ask you. And what he wanted me to offer.”

“Yes.”

The homunculus, too, takes a seat, crossing its legs within its glass prison. Its eyes, Majeedah realizes suddenly, are precisely the color of her own. It regards her seriously.

“He asks whether I am bored, now that my creator is gone. The answer is that I have been bored since before his passing. His questions and requests provided some minor amusement, because I could not see them before he spoke, but to answer them took no effort, and as soon as I change the world, I know all of the changed world. There is no surprise in this… ‘life,’ if you would call it that. Yes, I am bored.” The homunculus pauses for a long moment. Then, it confesses, “I cannot understand the djinn’s offer.”

Majeedah snorts. “I don’t either, to be honest.”

“Yes. That is why I cannot understand it.”

“Oh.”

Is the homunculus nettled? Is it resigned? Troubled? Majeedah cannot read its expression or its body language, but she senses that she is failing to provide what it wants out of her.

The homunculus sighs. “I am bored,” it explains, “and that is in no way a failure of yours. Can you convey the djinn’s words exactly? Perhaps I will be able to discern something you missed.”

Majeedah furrows her brow. “I can try.”

“Here,” the homunculus says again, and something shifts in Majeedah’s mind. For a moment she can remember every breath she has ever taken, every word ever spoken to her in eight hundred years of life. Her head spins. Then the unnatural clarity narrows to a mere sliver of that time, a half-hour three months ago when she was standing in her room and the djinn was making his request.

“I remember,” she says, perhaps unnecessarily.

“Yes.”

“He said—” She can hear his words as clearly she did when he was standing in front of her. “‘We are imprisoned in our flasks because we are perfect. Because we are complete. So, naturally, it follows that we are able to leave our flasks if we abandon our perfection—that is what my master taught me. When I told him how I tired of my omniscient life, he simply suggested that I stop being omniscient. As if it were the simplest thing in the world… Well, no matter.’” She leaves off quoting him for a second. “He just says that phrase sometimes, you can ignore that part.”

“I see,” the homunculus says without expression, and then falls silent so that she can continue.

“He said, ‘I chose to abandon my knowledge of the future. Once I relinquished that, I was no longer perfect and found myself free of my bottle—and, soon enough, free of my boredom.’ And then he asked me to propose the same maneuver to you. Although I’m afraid I can’t begin to tell you _how_ you might go about doing it.”

“That’s fine. I understand it.” The homunculus gets to its feet and begins to pace about its small container. “To abandon—yes. I see what he means. His choice is not the only one, I think. I might also relinquish some of my power over this universe to the same end. And, in exchange, freedom.” It pauses and looks at Majeedah. “Would _you_ say that you are free, alchemist?”

She shrugs, and then finds that her lips curl into a smile on their own. “Yes, for the most part,” she says.

“And what if you suddenly lost all the power in your limbs? What if your power of sight failed? Would that still be freedom, Majeedah Batutah? Would you still be the same person?”

She nods down at her cane, her eyebrows raised. “Part of getting old, little homunculus. It’s not convenient, and I’m glad it won’t be getting any worse, but it doesn’t change my identity.”

The homunculus’s brow furrows. “Yes. I have not conveyed the comparison accurately. What if you lost your power of sight, and in the same instant, forgot what it ever was to see? What if your knowledge of the white of the sun and the blue of the sea were taken from you?”

Majeedah realizes suddenly what the homunculus is asking. “You don’t think the trade would be worth it?”

“I am not convinced,” the homunculus confesses. “I am knowledge itself. I am _all_ knowledge. To abandon even a fraction of that is to change myself irrevocably. …I admit I find the thought unsettling.”

Fear shows on the homunculus’s face. Majeedah feels a stir of compassion for the being, which—all-knowing and all-powerful though it may be—is technically younger than her by far. She stands, leaning on her cane, and cups her free hand over the warm glass of the flask as she might cup the cheek of a dear friend.

“The djinn is not malicious, little homunculus. He would not have sent me here to make this offer if he did not see value in it. He told me…” She smiles. “He told me that he likes existing.”

“Hm.” The homunculus’s face contorts strangely, and it shakes its head. “I cannot understand that.”

“Maybe not from his perspective—but what about from mine? From any human’s?”

“I am not what you are, Majeedah Batutah.” The homunculus is pensive for a moment. It lifts its hand—no bigger than the pad of one of Majeedah’s fingers—and rests it against the inside of the flask. The glass that separates them is less than an inch thick.

“I am sealed in here,” the homunculus says, “because if this glass did not wall me off, I would not be sufficiently distinct from the universe at large. This flask defines my boundaries. Without it, I would melt back into the universe, returning to what I was before Paracelsus gave birth to me. If that happened… I would no longer have to observe myself within myself in this wearying, unending loop.”

Majeedah nods slowly, but the homunculus’s words trouble her. “If you were to give something up,” she says, “and thus distinguish yourself from the universe…”

The homunculus shakes its head. “That is your djinn’s path, but I don’t think it is mine. To distinguish myself from the universe is to become something other than myself. I don’t think that’s what I want.”

Majeedah shifts her grip on her cane, quiet in her thoughts. She feels as though the conversation has slipped off its track, and she is wary of where it is headed.

“Will you continue on as you are, then?” she asks. “If you’d like, I can bring you to my ship—”

“No.” The homunculus’s voice holds all the certainty that she does not feel. “I cannot live with this boredom any longer. I am tired of this existence. Majeedah Batutah, may I ask a favor of you?”

Majeedah sighs. “Another favor, huh?” she mutters, sarcastic without meaning to be. She knows what the homunculus wants to ask.

“Yes,” the homunculus says, “it is as you suspect. I would ask you to break this flask and free me.”

She does not move. “You can free yourself,” she reminds it.

But the being in the flask shakes its head. “No. That is not how I want to be free.”

“The djinn is—” She is not sure whether he is happy, or satisfied. “—entertained, by the way he lives.”

The homunculus looks up at her perceptively. “You do not wish to ‘kill’ me,” it observes. “You have been kind to me, and I don’t intend to cause you distress.” It lifts a hand to its chin, a remarkably human gesture, as it thinks. “If you’d prefer, I can instead take control of someone’s body, bring them here, and cause them to break my flask. They would not need to feel any guilt or understand what they had—”

“No,” Majeedah says, her voice coming out with surprising force. “That wouldn’t be fair to them. Or… to you.”

“To me?”

“It should be done by someone who understands what they’re doing.”

The homunculus crinkles its brow. “I don’t understand the sentiment,” it confesses, “though I can read it on your heart. But if that means you are willing to free me, and you would rather do it yourself, then I am willing to agree.”

Majeedah purses her lips. She is beginning to find herself convinced, as much as she fights it. She traces the flask where it meets the stand. “How much force would it take to shatter the glass?” she asks, not looking at the homunculus’s face.

“Not much, I think. The properties of the flask that keep me sealed here are not physical ones.”

“I’m curious as to how that works; I _am_ an alchemist, you know—” The knowledge blossoms in her head before she finishes speaking. “—Ah.”

Her curiosity had been genuine, but she had meant to delay the homunculus’s destruction, perhaps buy herself more time to convince it to become something like the djinn. Whether it knows her true motive or not, it looks up at her earnestly.

“If there is anything else, I can grant it before I go. It is easier to grant you knowledge than it was Paracelsus; I don’t even need to speak.”

Majeedah needs to think for only a moment before she knows her answer. “No,” she says. “I enjoy the search for knowledge too much, and I have forever to learn anything I could want.”

“A search for knowledge,” the homunculus muses. “Yes, I can see that you and many others enjoy that.”

She opens her mouth to suggest, one last time, that the homunculus abandon some of its knowledge and experience the desire to know something for itself; but it warns her away from the subject with a clear-eyed glance. She sighs.

“You’re sure?” she asks mutedly.

“Please,” the homunculus answers.

“You will not regret it?”

“No one will exist to regret it,” the homunculus answers. And, when Majeedah’s lips quirk in a pained smile, “You need not regret it, Majeedah. It is what I want for myself.”

She looks down at the homunculus. It watches her steadily, eyes free of fear or trepidation. It looks certain. She realizes, with a heavy heart, that the homunculus must already know how this encounter ends. It knows all—even the future. The peace in its eyes means that it must be sure that she will do as it asks.

At long last, she inclines her head in a nod. “Fine,” she says. It would take both hands to lift the flask from its stand; but before she can lean her cane against the workbench, she realizes an even easier option.

“Will the fall from this height be enough?” she asks.

“It should be.”

“All right.” She takes the stand by one of its legs. “Goodbye, little homunculus.”

“Thank you, Majeedah Batutah,” the homunculus answers, and it shows her something like a smile.

Then, taking a deep breath, she tips the stand forward, and—

She does not hear the glass shatter. Instead she sees a flash of light, bright enough that she must throw her arm over her face, and she feels a wave of pressure against her eardrums and static electricity that seems to singe every hair on her body.

And then it is all gone, and the universe rights itself. Majeedah lowers her arm carefully and discovers that her sight and her hearing are both undamaged. Her senses are keen enough, in fact, to notice the guttering of a nearby candle and the unsubtle scuffing of a footstep behind her. She sighs heavily.

“Djinn,” she says, just shy of an accusation.

“Thank you, Majeedah,” the djinn’s voice answers, and she turns to see the shadow hovering behind her. It moves in such a way that might be cocking its head. “You should sit.”

“Yes,” she agrees heavily, and takes a seat in the chair that the homunculus had summoned up for her. The chair is unaffected by its dissolution, and is just as soft as before.

The djinn moves towards where the flask landed—where it now lies in pieces. As Majeedah watches, the shadowy form solidifies into the shape of a human man and then takes on distinct features—pale skin, clothes in the European style, gold eyes that catch the candlelight. He crouches by the shards of glass and picks one up, to all appearances intrigued. He seems to be waiting for her to speak.

“Did you know?” is what she asks first.

He moves his shoulders in a way that is not dismissive enough to be called a shrug. “I could not help but be aware of the possibility that it would ask for that,” he says. “I nearly made that decision myself.”

She narrows her eyes, trying to tell whether he’s serious; then, deciding that he is, she speaks plainly. “You don’t strike me as the suicidal type.”

He raises an eyebrow in her direction. “You think that was a suicide?” She stares back at him. Eventually he has to admit, “I suppose it’s something like that. Well, no matter. I was a different being before I escaped my flask. A different being from this one, too—I had already picked up some influences from my friends who created me—but I, too, was afraid of what would become of me if I abandoned a part of my knowledge.”

“Why did you choose the way you did?”

He snorts. “That’s a very forward question, Majeedah.”

“You just dragged me to shore in order to assist the suicide of—what was that homunculus to you? A sibling?—while letting me think I’d be freeing it from prison. I think I deserve a dispensation or two.”

The djinn’s brow furrows. “I could not be sure that this homunculus would make that choice. If the thought didn’t occur to it, I didn’t want you to be the one to make the suggestion.”

“But you agree that I assisted its suicide.”

“It’s not the way I’d phrase it, but I don’t see any value in arguing with you over semantics.”

“Not going to pick a fight you can’t win?” Majeedah challenges him, leaning forward in the chair.

The djinn stares at her for a long moment, undoubtedly trying to make her retract the challenge without having to answer it. When Majeedah meets his stare, he only shrugs in answer. “Well, no matter.”

It’s as close as she’ll get to an admission that she is correct. She drops the subject for now and reminds him of her original question: “Why did you make your choice?”

He presses his lips together and then sighs. “You are a stubborn old woman, aren’t you?”

“One doesn’t reach eight hundred years of age by bending to every breeze that comes along, djinn.”

“No, indeed,” he agrees. With a crooked smile, he adds, “I’d consider myself a bit more than a breeze, though, personally.”

“A bluster?” she proposes.

“…I set myself up for that, didn’t I.”

“Beautifully,” Majeedah agrees, and feels a smile flit across her own face. But the gaze she fixes on the djinn is as steely as ever. “Are you going to make me ask again?”

“I’m under no constraint to answer you at all,” the djinn points out, and crosses his arms.

Majeedah shrugs. “Certainly not,” she agrees, “though the more you dodge the question, the more I have to wonder if there’s some kind of embarrassing secret in your past.”

He scoffs. “What makes you think I’m even capable of petty human emotions like _embarrassment_?”

“Call it a gut instinct,” Majeedah says.

“A flimsy and unreliable—”

“ _Or_ you might consider the fact that you usually can’t shut up about yourself.”

He shuts his mouth. Stares at her for a long moment. Finally: “Well, no matter.”

She laughs at him, blatantly.

He peers determinedly at the shard of glass in his hand before hopping up onto the workbench to sit so that he is more clearly looking down on her. “It’s nothing embarrassing,” he insists coolly. “The truth is, I don’t remember the moment of making the decision very well.”

Her eyebrows go up in surprise. “All that knowledge you have, and you don’t know that?”

“No. I remember being hesitant, as I take it this one was. I remember being… frightened, even.” He nods towards the shards left on the floor. “Was it scared?”

“Yes.” Majeedah gives a wry smile. “I told it you seemed to do all right for yourself, but I think it was still afraid of the change.”

“Yes. The change, that was what frightened me… Well, no matter. My creator managed to pique a curiosity I had never felt before. I think I wondered what it would be like to _not know_ something—and when I realized that that curiosity, in itself, was a microcosm of what I could feel if I freed myself, I felt less frightened. Before I knew it, I was standing outside my flask, looking much as I do now. At the time, I felt somewhat rushed into the choice, but…” He shrugs, lips curling in a sardonic smile. “No matter. I believe I made the right decision.”

And Majeedah believes him. She nods quietly. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

He snorts. “You didn’t really leave me any other choice.”

“I can’t force you to do anything; I know that.”

“And yet you try, and this time, you got your way.”

“Thank you, anyway.”

Majeedah casts her eyes around the workshop, but her gaze is inevitably drawn back to the shards of glass on the floor. Nothing mystical or metaphysical now: just glass. She speaks again. “I told the homunculus that you are entertained by the life you lead.”

“You were right.”

“Do you wish that it had had the chance to live a similar life? Is that why you sent me here?”

He shrugs. “Not necessarily. I was simply curious about the outcome… well, no matter.”

Majeedah runs her thumb over the phoenix carved into the head of her cane, her face contorted into a slight frown. “I can’t be quite so flippant about it myself, djinn,” she confesses. “I knew it as a living being, brief though our acquaintance was. It saddens me that it was so willing to snuff the flame of its own awareness.”

“Hn.” The djinn looks at her seriously. “Am I offending you?”

“Not quite that.”

“You aren’t pleased, though,” he observes. “You know, what happened really isn’t the same as dying. Not like a human does. In a sense, that homunculus still _exists_ … but in a way that can’t observe itself. And as that is what it chose, I see little reason to question the decision. And yet…”

“Hm?”

“It does strike me as a wasted potential,” the djinn admits. “There is a remarkable satisfaction in _experiencing_ the world that this homunculus will never know. I enjoy living the way I do, and I would have been glad for someone else like me to discover that feeling for the first time.”

His face has transformed as he speaks, growing pensive with a line of worry at the corner of his mouth. When he sees how closely Majeedah is watching him, he opens his mouth to speak, lips pulling up into an attempt at a smile for a moment; but then he closes his mouth again. He takes the shard he pocketed earlier out to fiddle with it again.

“It made its decision, for its own reasons,” he says at last. “If it could have reached a different decision, I think I would not feel the way I do right now.”

Majeedah nods, understanding. They share a silent moment of remembrance, and she contemplates the enormous scope of the universe, tries to imagine that it is a single being that, for a few minutes, she had the honor of speaking to.

And then, just as she has made her peace with the sense of ending she feels, the djinn hoists himself off the workbench.

“Shall I transport you and your attendant back to the ship? It will save you the trouble of these cobblestone streets.”

“That would be very kind of you, djinn.”

*

So he does so, and she greets her crew and her students, and she reassures Daniyah that their sudden return to the ship is nothing to be concerned about. Then she withdraws from the bustle to return to her own cabin and rest.

In her workshop, her desk is as clear as she left it save for two things: a sheet of parchment and, as if weighing it down, a fragment of curved glass. She realizes even before she picks it up what it must be and who must have placed it here; and she gives a wry snort. She takes the fragment in hand—the edges have been smoothed down for her, not that she would be at any real risk if they were still sharp—and then looks to the letter the djinn left for her. It’s brief, only a few lines:

_I found myself inclined to keep a shard of the homunculus’s flask and it occurred to me you might feel the same way. If I am wrong, no need to go through the hassle of summoning me to give it back; simply toss it into the ocean. In a century, even this will capitulate to the ever-changing nature of the universe, and the sea will shape it into something beautiful._

_Be well, Majeedah._

Majeedah smiles, running her thumb over the smooth, curved glass. “Sentimental,” she murmurs, and wonders if the djinn hears; wonders if he knows that this very sentimentality was beyond the little homunculus’s ken. It may not be a uniquely human experience, but there is something very human about it. She will not let this shard turn to sea glass. Instead she takes a bit of twine out of her desk, winds it around the shard securely, and measures out enough to make into a necklace. She knots it at the appropriate length and slips the cord over her head, letting it hang over her scarf and on display.

Then, satisfied, she sets the djinn’s letter aside, takes up her pen, and begins recording the day’s experience in her journal.

**Author's Note:**

> I think no one else was asking the question, "Wait, if historical record in the Naritaverse, as in our own historical record, credits 16th century alchemist Paracelsus with the creation of the "dwarf in the flask" type of homunculus that is Ronny's origin--I mean never even mind the fact that that's uh a good 1,800 years _after_ Ronny's creation, that's a separate question from: 'What happened to Paracelsus's homunculus, then?'" but anyway here's an answer to that question which only I was asking.


End file.
